The New Wooden Road Plan had briefly evolved into a New Railway Plan.
The Mountain Elves were all for it, but the Civil Official Girls soon stepped in to shut it down.
"There simply isn't enough iron," they stated flatly.
"Even if we were to buy up every scrap of iron currently on the market, it wouldn't be sufficient."
"And even if we did manage to secure enough, it would take decades just to manufacture the rails."
"Please, we're asking you to stick to a wooden railway, not an iron one."
"You mentioned that wood is weak against the rain, but what if we dug an underground tunnel between Village Five and Shashato City? We could run the line through there."
"With enough labor, that seems like a feasible alternative."
"Excuse me, but if the goal is just to transport goods, why are we so focused on rails? Wouldn't large golem carriages be enough? All we would have to do is maintain a proper road for them to travel on."
"That’s it! Let’s go with that!"
The Mountain Elves put up a fight, but it was no use. The New Railway Plan was officially denied.
It was a pity, really. But was iron truly that scarce? I had assumed it was being mined at a fairly steady rate. Curious, I decided to ask the Demon King.
"Well..." he began, his expression growing heavy.
I wondered for a moment if mining yields were some sort of state secret.
"It’s not that... The truth is, I don’t actually know the total volume of resources being pulled out of the ground, iron or otherwise."
"Really?"
"Indeed. Once something is pulled from a mine, it’s sold almost immediately, isn't it?"
I suppose that made sense.
"It gets processed where it's sold and then hits the market. The state focuses on the quantity of those finished goods; we don't track exactly what was mined or in what specific amount."
"I see. So, you don't tax the mining itself?"
"Standard mining sites are managed by the state or the local lords, but we don't do the actual digging. Instead, we sell the mining rights to groups with the necessary technical skills. Because they buy the rights, we don't levy a tax on the production."
"Not even on the ore they find?"
"Correct. Depending on the contract, the ore belongs entirely to the miners. If we were to tax that, small-scale mining would vanish overnight."
By small-scale, he meant the independent mining done by adventurers or small villages. It stood to reason that such efforts would dwindle if the government started taking a cut.
"Open-pit mining is one thing, but tunnel mining is dangerous work," the Demon King continued. "Then you have the magic beasts and monsters lurking on the paths to the sites. Honestly, it’s at the point where we’d almost be willing to pay people just to get them to mine for us."
So, by foregoing taxes, they were essentially subsidizing the industry to keep it alive.
"That makes sense. You need someone to do the work, after all."
Still, it seemed a bit problematic not to have any grasp of the total output. Even if the state didn't know, surely the mining collectives or the intermediary merchants had a sense of the local volume.
"If we were to start investigating, everyone would immediately suspect we were preparing to tax them."
"I see... Being a ruler is a lot of work."
"It really is."
With a weary sigh, the Demon King excused himself to go find solace among the cats.
On a related note, I learned that Howlin Village was actually a historic mining collective that had purchased "free mining rights" a long time ago. Sena, the daughter of the Howlin Village Head, was the one who told me.
If the Demon King didn't even track the volumes, was it really okay for things like gold and silver to be mined so freely? Perhaps the value of gold and silver was lower because the state didn't actually issue its own gold or silver coins.
In this world, most of the currency in circulation was money minted in ancient times. If the economy continued to develop, wouldn't they eventually run into a currency shortage? I had heard rumors that the dragons were managing that somehow, but it was still a concern.
It also reminded me that having so much wealth sitting stagnant in the village was a bad sign. I started thinking that perhaps I should find a way to circulate the gold and silver coins we had stored up.
However, I was already investing in education and the preservation of culture. I had no desire for wasteful spending, but maybe I should look into purchasing land or water rights? Still, I didn't want to buy things just for the sake of it.
I decided not to act on my own. I would consult with Yoko and the Civil Official Girls before moving forward.
Eventually, the Village Five infrastructure project began to move again. I thought the whole thing had been scrapped, but it turned out only the long-distance line to Shashato had been denied. The "Experimental Railway" connecting the south and northeast of Village Five was still on the table. It was a short distance, but it would be convenient and could potentially become a local landmark.
As for the iron supply, the Goroun Company and the Dalfon Company had worked miracles. They managed to secure just enough iron to cover the experimental line. Their struggle confirmed that trying to build a full-scale railway to Shashato would have been a reckless endeavor. Besides, the plan had originally called for a wooden road anyway.
However, the next hurdle was the manufacturing of the rails themselves. It soon became clear that creating long, durable iron rails by hand was impossible. We had set the standard length at ten meters, but there wasn't a single smithy capable of producing a rail that long. Nor was there a forge large enough to melt that much iron at once.
No one had ever made anything of that scale before. Even when we suggested cutting the length in half to five meters, the smiths told us it couldn't be done. Even if we built a massive factory and mechanized the process, the sheer amount of iron required just to build the machinery was staggering.
And so, the New Railway Plan reverted once more to the New Wooden Road Plan. We would keep the standard rail design rather than a monorail, but the actual tracks would be made of wood. The iron we had painstakingly collected would be diverted to the carriages and wheels.
"I know, I know," I muttered to myself. I would build iron storehouses to keep the surplus safe. Five of them should do.
The New Wooden Road was meant to connect the south and northeast of the village, but we hadn't actually secured a dedicated path for it yet. We had to decide between digging an underground road or using the village outskirts, where land was easier to claim.
The underground option had the benefit of being a direct, short line, provided there weren't any obstacles in the way. The downsides were the immense labor required for excavation and the need for constant lighting. Plus, underground stations would be a bit less convenient for passengers.
Using the outskirts would make land acquisition simple, but it would significantly increase the length of the track and require extra security measures.
"Village Head, would it be possible to just lay the tracks down the center of the main thoroughfares?" asked one of the Civil Official Girls during our inspection of the village.
A streetcar style, then. It was an option, but wouldn't that get in the way of the horse-drawn carriages? I supposed they could yield the right of way, but there was a significant amount of traffic on the main roads already.
"Regarding the carriage traffic," she continued, "don't you think it will decrease once the wooden road is finished?"
"You think so?"
"Isn't that the whole point of building it?"
She had a point. We were planning for a double-track system, not just a single line, because we anticipated heavy use. It would take up a fair bit of space, but...
"I'll start looking into potential routes," she said.
"Alright. Try to find roads that have room for expansion. And we'll need to designate specific areas where carriages can pull over to get out of the way."
Once they had a selection, I would have Yoko review it.
"Understood."
I brought the proposal to Yoko later, and she gave it her approval. Of course, the final decision still rested with me. I truly hoped this would work out.
"And Yoko," I added, "please stop predicting that this will eventually turn into a loop line surrounding the base of the entire mountain."
Deep down, I had the same suspicion. But how many years would a project of that scale even take? Even this short-distance line was going to take a considerable amount of time.